Harry Ally

Retired after more than 30 years as a professor of drawing and painting, Harry holds the title of Professor Emeritus at Valdosta State University. He has been represented by the Lowe Gallery in Atlanta and Santa Monica, the Soren Christensen in New Orleans, the Stricoff Fine Arts in NYC, and the Craighead Green Gallery in Dallas and the Magenta Gallery in San Miguel de Allende.Harry describes painting as “the primal instinct to mark. It’s a visual record of mind, body, and spirit...an existential search for meaning.”  “Michelangelo said that his task was to release the figure imprisoned within the stone. Similarly, I try to excavate the figure’s presence from the canvas. Borrowing from Jacob Landau’s theory that distortion is necessary to achieve reality, I employ abstraction as a means to seek truth. Abstraction expands to the universal; verisimilitude limits to the specific.” Harry and his wife Suzanne currently live and share a studio in San Miguel de Allende, MX. They feel that the studio is where art is most alive, where pieces are in constant states of flux, and where creative struggles take place, that the "process of art making" should be documented in each piece and that a work of art should remain "actively unfinished", a gestalt strategy promoting viewer participation. Harry and Suzanne have worked closely over the years, influencing the work of one another, and often working in collaboration.